Pitchfork

As any member of the iGeneration knows, you never quite own the music you purchase off iTunes. Make too many personal copies of a digital audio file and poof, your privilege is gone. Try to play it on another, non-iPod media player and you'll likely encounter the sweet sound of silence. And don't even think of rocking files downloaded from most other digital retailers on your Pod-- if you didn't buy it from somewhere enlightened, that's just crazy talk.

The culprit in these instances is the reviled little bugger known as DRM, which stands for Digital Rights Management, which refers to a bit of coding melded into digital media files to curtail copyright violations or personal freedom, depending on whom you ask. Apple's iTunes uses what's known as FairPlay (ha) DRM when coding its files, and the music-buying public-- at least those of us who are aware of it-- pretty much universally hates it.

Well, no April Fools joke here-- DRM's stranglehold over at least one major label's digital tunes will soon come to an end. Sort of.

According to various reports, Apple CEO Steve "Mac Daddy" Jobs and EMI Group chief Eric "Jolly Old Saint" Nicoli announced this morning in London that EMI will begin offering DRM-free audio content via iTunes. Here's the rub, however: these files, higher in quality, will sport a fetching 30 cent price increase ($1.29 as opposed to iTunes' standard rate of $0.99).

What's more, EMI will continue offering DRM-infected fare at the regular rate. Still, baby steps. Baby steps.

Read the full announcement here. The press conference also featured a brief performance from Damon Albarn's Danger Mouse-produced regal supergroup the Good, the Bad & the Queen, signed to EMI subsidiary Parlophone.

"We think our customers are going to love this," said Jobs-- who has blamed DRM for stifling digital music sales-- at the press conference, "and we expect to offer more than half of the songs on iTunes in DRM-free versions by the end of this year."

We can probably expect that many, if not most, independent labels will gladly follow suit-- they're already selling their tunes DRM-free over at eMusic, Insound, Bleep, Rough Trade Digital, etc. Will they want to charge more for the privilege, like EMI? We'll see.